What Twitter's IPO means for users: CNET News Video

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CNET News Video: What Twitter's IPO means for users

2:04 /
November 7, 2013

Twitter's IPO had a smooth start compared with Facebook's, even though questions remain
about whether Twitter can turn a profit. But putting financials aside, CNET's Kara Tsuboi and
Daniel Terdiman discuss what it means for everyday users now that Twitter is a
publicly traded company.

-Twitter announced the start of trending today with a simple tweet, ring but pop may have been appropriate.
Twitter shares opened at $45, more than 70 percent higher than the $26 per share price Twitter set.
With that pricing, Twitter is now valued at more than $31 billion.
The initial price Pop came about an hour after the opening bell rung by three Twitter users:
Star Trek actor Patrick Stewart, a 9-year old activist Vivienne Harr, and a Boston police office.
The IPO made instant billionaires of its founders who are at the stock exchange and instant millionaires of some of its employees.
Many who celebrated from the San Francisco headquarters, and the event was, of course, shared on Twitter.
-[unk]--
-Launched in 2006, Twitter boasts around 232 million monthly users worldwide.
Everyone from the Pope, to President Obama, to Taylor Swift,
and have made the term hashtag a pop culture phenomenon.
-Hashtag, is it Friday yet?
-But Twitter has yet to make a profit.
This highly-anticipated public offering comes a year and a half after Facebook's disastrous IPO.
Initially selling for $38 a share, a dip to a low of $17, and took more than a year to rebound back to its IPO price.
-One of Facebook's biggest problems was that they hadn't figured out how to make money off of mobile.
Twitter, on the other hand,
has its services really built for a mobile, and it always has been, and they've got a lot of advertising on mobile.
Now that Twitter has shareholders to answer to, will users be seeing any changes?
-Certainly, you're gonna see more embedded videos and, you know, ads that will be at the beginning and probably at the end of videos.
So, if people wanna get that rich content on Twitter, they're gonna have to look at more advertising.
-Now investors and Twitter will wait and see if in the long run the stock is hashtag successful.
In San Francisco, I'm Kara Tsuboi, CNET.com
for CBS news.